Market Watch: Hothouse tomatoes from Ridgecrest, flavor included

The desolate, scrubby plain around Ridgecrest, where the Sierra Nevada meets the Great Basin and the Mojave desert, might seem an incongruous source for tomatoes, especially in the middle of winter. Nevertheless, Scott and Gale Shacklett, who go by the name of TomatoMan, manage to produce superior, flavorful tomatoes in more than half an acre of greenhouses here, where sonic booms from the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station shatter the silence.

By David Karp

February 3, 2012